‘Vorozheya’: We discover that the Internet remembers far from everything

Russian Art Focus met with ‘Vorozheya’ (The Witch), a group of four young female artists Valeriya Grai, Nastya Korotkova, Anna Afonina and Maria Romanova. In 2021 they became winners of ‘Born Digital’, an annual competition established by Cosmoscow and Audi.

Anna Afonina, Nastya Korotkova and Maria Romanova are students of the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia and studied under Sergey Bratkov and Alexey Shulgin. Together with Valeriya Grai they started to work together in 2020 on a media project for the Moscow International Biennale of Young Art. Subsequently they formed a group and named it after their first project, ‘Vorozheya’.

Being millennials they were raised on computer games and the internet which has left an indelible mark on their creative concerns. They create interactive web-art with popular philosophical references, post-soviet nostalgia and criticism of capitalism with some feminist flair. Their latest project ‘Safari Verucca’ made for ‘Born Digital’ is an installation combining baroque aesthetics with reflection on the relationship between humans and the planet, as well as between young artists and established art institutions.